Parasound Halo JC 5

Parasound's 73-pound JC 5 delivers a whopping 400 watts per channel, and it's stable enough to drive just about any speakers you might care to hook up. In bridged mode, this amp really turns on the juice, putting out an amazing 1,200 watts into a single channel. All that power comes from a beefy toroidal transformer and a high-bias Class A/AB amplifier design that help your system reproduce music with stunning clarity and accuracy. The "JC" designation — and the signature on the front and back panels — lets you know it was designed by the company's audio design guru John Curl (more on him later). Parasound's Halo JC 5 amplifier delivers a mighty 400 watts per channel of clean power, thanks to design details like its massive custom power transformer. You don't see a Class A/AB amplifier every day, so let's break down the benefits. Engineers and audiophiles generally agree that Class A designs offer the purest sound, but they tend to run hot and take up a lot of space. As a result, home audio amplifiers ofte...